| It's a good question, and I can at least say something positive about every solution. Ads let you make money long before you're big enough to compel subscriptions... but they basically make the least tech savvy people subsidize the rest of us which isn't fair. Paywalls on everything seems fair, but it means that only some people will see things that everyone should read. Like a critical bit of investigative journalism. Paywall + free articles per IP address (common solution) is almost good, but it requires every single content producer to polish the system, and IP address isn't the ideal fingerprint. Requiring everyone to quickly register (like Apple sign-in) seems decent, but once again now everyone has to polish this system. Though until you're big you could just use substack/wordpress/whatever. Bundle subscriptions like Apple News is a decent solution—one of the few times I've paid for news—, but secures the domination for incumbents large enough to appear on Apple News. It doesn't answer the question for anyone else. Microtransactions seem like they'd be a good way to throw some scraps to even tiny sites you visit once. But I think there's too much psychological overhead that isn't even worth the pennies. Like when you had to click the +1 Flattr button back in the day, even though it was a tiny donation, you'd still find yourself thinking if it was really worth it. Hmm I only read half the article, etc. |